65 The UNGP-BHR provides that States must fulfill their duty to protect human rights by creating laws, policies, and regulations to ensure that businesses respect human rights and refrain from committing abuses. States must provide effective judicial and non-judicial remedies for victims who seek accountability for abuses by businesses, thus: The State duty to protect is a standard of conduct. Therefore, States are not per se responsible for human rights abuse by private actors. However, States may breach their international human rights law obligations where such abuse can be attributed to them, or where they fail to take appropriate steps to prevent, investigate, punish and redress private actors’ abuse. While States generally have discretion in deciding upon these steps, they should consider the full range of permissible preventive and remedial measures, including policies, legislation, regulations and adjudication. States also have the duty to protect and promote the rule of law, including by taking measures to ensure equality before the law, fairness in its application, and by providing for adequate accountability, legal certainty, and procedural and legal transparency.316 The UNGP-BHR provides that States should set out a clear expectation that all business enterprises domiciled in their territory must respect human rights.317 This expectation should cover all aspects of business operations. This may involve requiring corporations to fully disclose their global operations, including the operations of their subsidiaries.318 Thus, States should provide guidance to business enterprises on how to respect human rights, and to encourage compliance, States should enforce laws that require enterprises to do so.319 Whenever States contract with or legislate for business enterprises to provide services that may impact the enjoyment of human rights, States should exercise adequate oversight in order to meet their international human rights obligations.320 Enterprises have a responsibility to respect human rights under the UNGP-BHR. States must operationalize how enterprises are to meet the requirements for fulfilling the said responsibility. This may be comprised of regulations requiring enterprises to put in place policies and processes that include: (a) a commitment to meet their responsibility to respect human rights; (b) a human rights due diligence process to identify, mitigate and account 316 Id. at 6 (Commentary on Principle 1, emphasis supplied). 317 Id. (Principle 2). 318 Id. (Commentary on Principle 2; Principle 3 (d) Encourage, and where appropriate require, business enterprises to communicate how they address their human rights impacts). 319 Id. (Principle 3 (a)). 320 Id. (Principle 5).

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents